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Turkey – What’s going on?

Turkey – What’s going on?

MANY thought that things in Turkey were going to change for the better.

From 1982, the secularist government of Turkey had banned the wearing of a head scarf in public. Last week, President Abdullah Gul signed into law a constitutional amendment that aimed to ease restrictions regarding hijaab on university campuses.

Students at most universities however found that the security guards and officials were still not allowing women to don the hijaab. This was even though the Turkish Higher Education Board (HEB) had warned that preventing students from attending classes because of the head cover is a “crime.”

A recent BBC report is even more frightening. Academics at Ankara University have been commissioned by the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs to write a document that would present a very different Islam from what Muslims have been traditionally taught.

The Hadith of the Prophet (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) is to be revised, since the government believes that, in its current form, it has often had a negative influence on society.

The view that many of the traditions were never uttered by the Prophet is being put forward, and it has been suggested that many other traditions need to be re-interpreted. Felix Koerner who serves as an advisor to the team working on this project states that some of the ‘sayings’ of the Prophet can be shown to be invented hundreds of years after he passed away. Members of the project have asserted that Muslims have, over the generations, embellished the text of the ahaadith, in their aim to serve their political and other needs and purposes.

The methodology and approaches that these project members have employed are a far cry from the meticulous systems of evaluating ahaadeeth of the pious scholars of Islam. In many cases they have assumed the use of methods of Western critical techniques and philosophy.

Surely, what they are doing is nothing less that writing or structuring a new Islam?